Ilgunas walked the Keystone XL route across the Plains, most of it on other people’s land, and came out with a question: When did Americans lose the run of their own country? His answer is that they had it and handed it over. Before the 1860s you could cross a farmer’s field and shoot a bird on it — that was custom, and in some states it was law. Then came trespass statutes, barbed wire in 1874, and the posted sign. Now about two-thirds of the country is private, and in the East it’s nearly all of it. Meanwhile Sweden has allemansrätten, Scotland lets you camp almost anywhere, and England opened its moors after five men went to jail for a mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932.
This Land Is Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back